


A Girl Is Not Defined By The Shoes She Wears

by frankiesin



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Cinderella AU, F/M, Misgendering, Trans!Gerard, Transphobia, cinderella crossover ?, magic happens, purposeful misgendering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankiesin/pseuds/frankiesin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gee's a girl. She knows she's a girl, but her new step-father and step-sisters just don't get it. She's pretty sure that she'll be trapped in her own home for the rest of her life, until she hears about a ball held by the local kingdom. </p><p>All the women of the country are invited. Gee's going, she just has to find a way out.</p><p>(A modern Cinderella story, but with Frank and trans!Gee instead)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Girl Is Not Defined By The Shoes She Wears

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first story here, ever. I actually wrote it as a project for my English class (the project was to take a fairy tale and make it modern and then explain why we did what we did), but I knew it was going to be Frerard the whole time I wrote it.
> 
> I had to change the names for the sake of the project, obviously, but I've changed everyone back to who they should be. If I missed anyone, please let me know.
> 
> Also, the step-father and step-sisters are all OCs because I didn't want to make anyone in bandom be the villain.

Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman, and they were in love. Because they were in love, they got married, and they had two children. They thought that they were going to be raising two handsome boys, but six years later, their older son came to them with flowers braided through his hair and told them that they were wrong. They did not have two sons, they had one son and one daughter, and she wanted to be called Gee. The man and the woman, like most parents, loved their child, and told her that that they loved her no matter what her name was or what her gender was. And so they started to call her Gee, and they bought her dresses and skirts. Gee was allowed to grow her hair down to her shoulders so that it could curl a little, and she got to put as many flowers into her hair as she wanted.

 

Of course, the happiness didn’t last. When Gee was seven years old and her younger brother, Mikey, was four, her father became very ill and died. Gee’s mother was saddened by the loss of her husband, and it showed. It used to be that Gee and Mikey’s mother would wake up every morning and get them dressed and ready so that they could go outside and play. After Gee’s father died, her mother rarely left her room. Her mother was an artist, and so Gee just assumed that her mother was making art in her room.

 

Because Gee’s mother wasn’t there, Gee learned how to get herself and her younger brother dressed in the mornings. Once they were dressed and had eaten, assuming their mother had remembered to leave her room long enough to go to the city market and buy food, they would both go outside. Sometimes Gee would bring her sketch book with her, and she would draw while Mikey ran around. Sometimes they would be joined by their two friends, Ray and Lindsey, and the four of them would go on childish adventures, making up storylines and just enjoying their childhood as much as they could. No one asked about Gee and Mikey and why they didn’t really have a mother.

 

Gee didn’t have any other friends besides her brother, Ray, and Lindsey. She liked the three of them, but sometimes they were a bit too loud, or too wild. Gee wanted to find a friend who was calmer. So one day, when she was about eight years old and her brother and their two friends were out in the front of Gee’s house, Gee snuck around to her own backyard and entered the forest. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to find someone in the forest, but she didn’t know where else to start. She did find someone, though. He was a boy, just around her age, and he was talking to a rabbit, stroking the rabbit’s head and promising the creature that he would never hurt it. Gee watched the boy, but she didn’t talk to him. She was afraid. Lindsey’s mother had warned Lindsey and Gee about how boys were dangerous, with Ray and Mikey being exceptions. There were boys out there who would want to hurt Gee because of who she was. There were people out there who wouldn’t see Gee as a girl, and would hurt her because of it.

 

Gee didn’t talk to the boy, because she was afraid. She was afraid that he would be like one of the scary boys Lindsey’s mother had warned her about.

 

She came back to the same spot the next day, and the day after, even though she was still afraid of the boy. He was always there, and he was always surrounded by forest animals. Gee wondered if he lived in the forest. She knew that the only way to find out for sure was to walk up and ask. He didn’t look very dangerous. He was kind of small. On the fifth day of her adventure, Gee drew up enough courage and walked up to the boy. She sat down beside him, careful to not disturb the animals around him. He looked up at her, his golden brown eyes wide. She offered him a small smile. “Hi, my name is Gee. Who’re you?”

 

“I’m Frank.” The boy responded, and scooped up a squirrel, offering it to her. She took the creature carefully, petting its small head with two fingers.

 

“Why are you out here in the forest?” Gee asked him.

 

“I’m talking to the animals. My dad wants me to grow up and be a hunter, but I don’t want to.” The boy said. He was petting the head of a fox. “I love these animals, more than I love people. Animals don’t hurt others for fun. People do. People aren’t very nice.”

 

Gee couldn’t help but agree with that statement when she left the forest to go back home. She had never told Mikey or her friends about the boy in the woods, because she wanted to keep him a secret. It just seemed to be the right thing to do.

 

When she got home, Mikey ran out and grabbed her, tears falling from his face. He told her that their mother was getting married. Gee was about to get a new father, and two new sisters. Gee didn’t know what the problem with that was, because surely her and Mikey’s new family would help their mother be less sad.

 

There were problems, though. The first was that Gee’s new step-father was a sorcerer, and not a very nice one. The second was that Gee’s step-father to be didn’t believe that Gee was a girl. The step-father kept asking what Gee’s real name was, because Gee was a girl name and Gee, according to her step-father, was not a girl. Gee’s new step-sisters, two girls a few years older than Gee, named Amelia and Allison, kept calling her names. Gee hated it. She hated her new sisters, and her new father. Mikey didn’t like them either, but he was only five, so he couldn’t do much.

 

One day, not long after the wedding, Ray and Lindsey came over to ask when Gee and Mikey were going to come outside and play. Gee and Mikey ran for the door, thinking that this would be their best chance to escape, but their step-father caught them. He began to hit Gee. Mikey, Lindsey, and Ray weren’t going to let their friend get hurt, and so they tried to get between the step-father and Gee.

 

With an angry flourish of his hand, the step-father flung the three other children away. When they hit the floor again, they had all been turned into mice. Gee began to cry. Her brother and two of her friends were _mice_.

 

Her step-father grabbed her by her chin and made her face him. “Play nice, Gerard, or I’ll turn you into something worse.”

 

 _Gerard_. Gee hated that name. That was the name that she had been called before she told her parents that she was a girl. That was the name that her step-father had somehow figured out, and was going to use against her.

 

Her step-father let go of her and left her alone at the front of the house. Gee knew it was dangerous, but she had to get away, just for a little bit. She picked up her brother and her two friends, now in mice-form, and sprinted out the door, not looking back. She ran to the forest, where she hoped that Frank would be. She wouldn’t be able to tell him much, but she just needed someone to remind her that she was loved and valid. Her mother hadn’t been healthy or happy enough to do either of those things for years.

 

Gee found Frank in the forest, and she fell by his side, still holding her three mice close to her chest. She was crying again, and Frank patted her head before asking what was wrong. Gee wiped her tears away with her free hand and said, “My mom got tricked into marrying this horrible man, and he took my brother and my friends away from me.”

 

“I’m sorry.” Frank hugged her back tightly. “I promise I won’t ever leave you, and I’ll do everything I can to keep him from hurting you.”

 

“Thank you.” Gee said.

 

Frank kissed the top of her head. “Come here whenever you can, okay? But don’t come if it’s not safe.”

 

Gee promised that she would, and for the next three years, she snuck out to the forest whenever she could. More often than not, she snuck out at night, because that was when everyone in the house was sleeping and wouldn’t know that she was gone. Frank didn’t mind adjusting their friendship to being a nocturnal meeting. He was sure that they would be best friends forever. Gee promised that, so long as she kept finding him, they would be.

 

Unfortunately for both Frank and Gee, their friendship contract expired. Neither of them wanted it to, but they were only children and they couldn’t control what their parents did. Gee’s mother went off to an art festival three weeks before Gee’s thirteenth birthday and never returned, and Frank’s father decided that Frank needed to stop playing around in the forest and learn how to fight like a man. Gee, now motherless, was moved down to the basement, along with the washing and ironing board and the tub used to clean the dishes. Her step-father told her that if she thought she was a real girl, then she would have no problem doing all the female household chores. Gee wasn’t allowed to argue with his decision. She was just locked in the basement with her three mice. All of her art supplies were thrown away, except for two paintbrushes she had hidden up her sleeve, and a bottle of paint she found in the basement.

 

Gee hated having to do everything for her step-father and her two step-sisters, and the basement wasn’t as bad as she had expected it to be. There was a small window, too small for her to climb out of, but it let in the sunlight, and if she sat the right way, she could paint by the light of the moon once the sun went down. She painted Frank, and what she remembered her brother and her two friends looking like, before they had been turned into mice.  

 

She missed Frank. She worried that he thought she hated him. She constantly told her worries to the mice. “What if he thinks that I don’t like him anymore? What if he thinks that I think he’s annoying, or that his whole vegetarian ideal is dumb? I wish I could sneak out, but they lock the door to the basement at night and the window is too small for me to get out of.”

 

The mice never gave her any advice on how to reunite with her childhood friend, so Gee spent the next five years of her life stuck in a basement with one small window, a lot of chores, and an ever dwindling supply of paint supplies. She learned that mixing the soot from the fire place with the water used for washing clothes could make a subpar version of black paint, and so Gee adapted her art to be only black and white, and not very good. She would paint at night, once everyone else in the house had gone to bed, and once she was done she would hang the paper to dry on spare clothes pins. She always got up before her step-father and her step-sisters to make them breakfast, so she had time to take the dried paintings down and hide them under her bed before they could be found.

 

The paintings and the mice were the only things that kept Gee from giving up sometimes. Her step-sisters had gotten in the habit of cutting off Gee’s hair whenever it got to her shoulders, and they never cut it evenly. Amelia, the stronger of the two sisters, would pin Gee’s arms down while Allison went at Gee’s head with a pair of sewing scissors, cutting off Gee’s dark locks of hair with choppy slices. Gee hated it, she hated that they couldn’t just let her be and let her do her chores and clean the house in peace. Cutting her hair off seemed unnecessary.

 

Her step-father wouldn’t let her wear anything other than pants and long-sleeved, baggy shirts that weren’t feminine at all. Gee had once tried to make a simple dress out of her bed sheets, just to have a dress. She had been sixteen then, and when her step-father had come down to the basement to throw more dirty dishes at her, he had seen the half-finished dress and he had gone into a rage. He burned the dress, and then went through the entire basement, looking for anything else that Gee was hiding from him. He found all her art and burned it too, along with the paint and one of the paintbrushes she had kept. Gee had the other one up her sleeve, because having a paint brush on hand made her feel like she didn’t belong to him. It made her feel like one day she would be free from this terrible place.

 

It was horrible, but it was the only life she had. Part of her wanted to find a man who would marry her, just so that she could get out of the basement and never have to come back. She knew better than to get hopeful; after all, she was a plain clothed girl with uneven hair and no clothes. She was poor, and she never left the basement. There was never a chance for her to even meet a man.

 

Then, suddenly, there was a chance. The king’s son was turning eighteen, and the king had decided to throw a ball in order to find the prince a wife. All the eligible women in the kingdom were invited to the ball.  Amelia and Allison were excited, both of them hoping to woo the prince and marry him. Surprisingly, they weren’t fighting each other over the potential crown. Amelia was fine with Allison getting the prince, and vice versa, so long as the sister who married the prince also let the other one come visit the castle. Gee, not for the first time in her life, wished that Amelia and Allison considered her to be one of their sisters. Not because Gee wanted to marry the prince (she didn’t even know who he was, how was she supposed to know if she wanted to marry him?), but because she thought that the royal castle was really pretty, at least on the outside, and she wanted to see it one day.

 

That wasn’t going to happen, though, because neither of her step-sisters saw her as a girl, and her step-father had yelled in her face, telling her that there was no way she was going to the dance, and there was no way she would be getting a dress out of this.

 

Gee had a plan, though. She knew how to sew, and she knew how to sneak extra fabrics down to her basement room. Amelia and Allison, despite really wanting to go to the ball, were picky about what fabric their dress would be made of, and discarded fabric roll after fabric roll. Gee had a lot of options, and enough time to make a nice dress. It was a soft teal colour, and it flowed. She didn’t have shoes, aside from the white ones she had kept from her mother. They were from her mother’s wedding night, and they were a little too small, but Gee had made her dress long enough that she would be able to dance barefoot without anyone else at the ball noticing. She had a plan, and it was a good plan, up until the day of the ball.

 

On the day of her ball, Gee finally let her hair down from where she had been tying it up. She had tied it up so that Amelia and Allison wouldn’t realise how long it was getting, and so they wouldn’t cut it. They wouldn’t have noticed anyway, because they were too busy getting themselves ready for the ball to notice much of anything else. Gee was glad for that, because when she let her hair down for the first time in over two months, it came just past her shoulders, in soft, under-washed dark waves. She didn’t put the dress on, because it was too early, and she was scared to put it on just yet, but she put it up to her chest and looked at herself in the small, grimy mirror that her step-father allowed her to have in the basement. She looked nice. She looked feminine. She smiled to herself, watching as Mikey scurried up the side of the bar and perched himself at the top of it. “I don’t care if the prince looks at me, Mikey. I’m going to get to see the inside of the castle, and then I’ll have something interesting to paint for… for years!”

 

Mikey didn’t say anything. He was a mouse.

 

Gee was too caught up in her daydream to notice the door opening, and her step-father coming into the room. She did notice when he ripped the dress from her hands and threw it to the ground, and then grabbed her by her hair and dragged her up the stairs to where her step-sisters were getting ready for the ball. They both looked at Gee, grabbing at her step-father’s hands and tearing up, trying not to cry out loud. Both of them had huge eyes and dropped jaws, and they looked afraid of their own father. He threw Gee at their feet. “You know what to do with him.”

 

“I’m not a boy.” Gee managed to choke out. Her step-father glared down at her, and kicked at her. She blocked it with her arm. He spat at her once before he stormed back to the basement. Gee knew what he was about to do: he was going to destroy her dress. She started crying then, because she had worked hard to make it all on her own, and now Allison and Amelia were going to cut all her hair off.

 

They did, but they looked really guilty while they did it, and they actually styled it into something that wasn’t horrific. They gave her a masculine haircut, but it was even and her short bangs were swept to the side. If Gee had wanted short hair, it would look nice. She didn’t want short hair though, and she didn’t want to have to go back to the basement again when she knew that her dress and her only chance at freedom was gone, just like her hair. She went back down anyway, and as soon as the door was slammed shut and locked, she burst into tears again. She sobbed into floor, because her step-father had taken all the stolen fabric and all her sheets and destroyed them. It wasn’t as though Gee could make a whole dress in a few hours. She wasn’t that good at sewing. She didn’t have any magic in her.

 

Lindsey and Ray crawled up on her arm and nibbled at her short bangs. She raised her head and tapped them each on the head. Mikey crawled up and sat on her hand. She tapped his head too. “At least you three aren’t mean to me.”

 

Lindsey squeaked, looking at something outside her window. Gee didn’t think anything of it at first, but then the other two looked at the window too, and Gee figured that something was going on out there. She turned her head to the window, which was open, to see a bright orb coming in through it. As Gee watched with wide eyes, the orb turned into Lindsey’s mother, but with added fairy wings. Gee’s eyes grew wide. Lindsey’s mother’s mouth turned up in a smile, and she knelt down beside Gee. She put her head on top of Gee’s head. “I should have known something was wrong when my daughter never came back to me. I just assumed she had finally given up on me and my magic and had run away to her father’s house.”

 

“No, Lindsey’s been with me. She’s a mouse, though. That’s kind of my fault.” Gee said with her eyes closed. Lindsey’s mother ran her hand through Gee’s hair, gently. “It’s not your fault that my daughter wanted to protect you. Sometimes things bad happen to the people we love, and we can’t fix them easily.”

 

“I wish we could.” Gee said. Lindsey’s mother hummed a sound of affirmation. “I know, darling. Now, open your eyes.”

 

Gee opened her eyes and screamed in shock. Lindsey, Ray, and Mikey were humans once again. They were all older now, and were all dressed like they were about to go attend a really nice part. Gee got up from the floor and ran over, grabbing her brother and hugging him tightly. “Mikey, I missed you so much.”

 

Lindsey and Ray joined in on the hug as well. Ray pat Gee on the back. “We’re coming with you to the ball. There’s a car waiting outside.”

 

“But the door’s locked.” Gee said, and turned to Lindsey’s mother. “Isn’t it?”

 

It was not. Lindsey’s mother led the four teenagers up the stairs and through the house, to where a simple black car was sitting in the driveway, waiting for the four of them. Lindsey’s mother touched Gee’s cheek. “You look beautiful. Now go, and have fun at the ball. Win yourself a prince if you’re so inclined.”

 

Gee thanked her, and got into the backseat with her brother. She finally looked down at herself, to see that she was in a more bedazzled version of her teal dress, and her hair was back down to her shoulders. It was clean, curled, and styled, and Lindsey’s mother was right: she did look beautiful. Gee leaned out of the car window, beckoning Lindsey’s mother over. “How much magic did you have to use to make me look like this?”

 

“Oh, not that much. You were beautiful already; most of the magic went towards the car and getting my daughter and your friends back to where they should be.” Lindsey’s mother said. She crouched outside of the car and looked Gee in the eyes. “But before you go and have your fun, you need to know that what I did was a temporary spell. If you get back here before midnight, I’ll be able to make it permanent.”

 

Gee nodded sincerely. “I’ll be back in time, I promise.”

 

“Good. Now go have fun.” Lindsey’s mother said, standing up and backing away from the car. She waved at the four of them as Lindsey drove off. Gee watched her disappear before turning her attention to the scenery around her. She didn’t know if she would ever get to see it again. She had every intention of getting back to the house by midnight, so that Lindsey’s mother could make the spells permanent, but she still wanted to enjoy the moment. It didn’t take too long before they arrived at the castle, and Lindsey parked the car on the drive outside of the gates. They walked in together, but split up once they were inside the building itself. Gee considered sticking with her friends and her brother, but this was their first night of freedom as well. She would find them eventually. They would have their time together at some point.

 

“Gee?” A voice called out to her, and Gee turned to see a young man in royal attire moving through the crowd. He came up to her, putting his hands on her face. “Gee, are you real?”

 

“Yes,” Gee said, a little confused as to how the prince (because he had to be the prince if he was dressed like royalty) knew her name. She looked him over once more, and that was when she realised who he was. With a gasp, she flung her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug. “Frank! You didn’t tell me you were a prince!”

 

“I didn’t want you to think differently of me.” He said from where his face had been awkwardly pressed into her shoulder. Gee pulled back so that she wasn’t smothering him anymore. “I’m sorry I never came back. I’m still your friend, you know.”

 

“I know. I know what it was like for you; I figured that you just _couldn’t_ get out to see me. I’m glad you’re here now, though.” Frank said. He dropped his gaze down, and from where Gee stood, it looked like he was trying to hide a blush. After a moment, he looked back up at her, his eyes wide and hopeful. “Do you want to dance?”

 

“With you? Of course.” Gee smiled at him, and he led her further into the dancefloor. They spent most of the night dancing, sometimes swaying back and forth, and other times actually dancing with everyone else. They talked about everything they could think up. Frank talked about what his life had been like since he last saw Gee, and Gee shared a little bit of her own life. She left a lot of the details out because she didn’t want to scare Frank away. She also preferred hearing Frank talk about himself, because his life in the castle had been much more interesting than her life in the basement. They were so caught up in each other that Gee didn’t notice how late it was getting until she felt a tugging on her arm. She turned to see Mikey standing there, looking impatient. “Gee, we need to go now.”

 

“Is it time already?” Gee asked. Mikey nodded, and tugged at her arm again. Gee turned to Frank and hugged him once more. Mikey told her that he’d be waiting at the car, if she wanted a moment alone, but that she had to be quick about it. Gee promised that she would be, and then Mikey disappeared into the crowd again. Frank frowned. “Do you really have to go?”

 

“Yes.” Gee said. Frank nodded, more to himself than anyone else, and then he reached up and kissed her on the lips. Gee hadn’t expected that, but she didn’t have time to question it. Frank gave her a smile and hugged her once again before he said, “Come back soon, please.”

 

“I will.” Gee promised him, and this time she meant it, and she knew she would do whatever she had to do to find him again. She ran off after that, because she couldn’t risk her friends’ and her brother’s lives just for one person, no matter how much she had missed him and was glad to see him again. As she ran down the steps, one of her heels got caught in a crack and came off. Gee stumbled, and was about to go back and get her fallen shoe when Ray called out, telling her to hurry up so that they weren’t late. Gee reached down and pulled off her other shoe, tucking it under her arm as she ran the rest of the way to the car barefoot. She slid into the backseat, beside Mikey, and Lindsey drove off.

 

They arrived minutes before midnight, long enough for Lindsey’s mother to draw up enough magical energy to make her previous spells permanent. Gee was about to ask what they were going to do next (because she wasn’t going to make Mikey go back to that house, no matter what), when her step-father appeared behind her, grabbing her by her hair and pulling her away from the others. Lindsey’s mother raised her hands like she was going to cast a spell on him, but she was tossed back with a flick of Gee’s step-father’s wrist. “Don’t bother. I’m not going to hurt him, I’m just taking him back where he belongs. Isn’t that right, Gerard?”

 

“Let go of my sister!” Mikey shouted. Gee tried to shake her head, even though doing so hurt because of how she was being held. “Mikey, no. Just go, I’ll be okay. I promise.”

 

Mikey looked like he wanted to protest, but Ray put a hand on his shoulder and said something to him that convinced him to back off. As soon as Gee’s step-father realised that no one was going to try and stop him, he yanked on Gee’s hair and dragged her back into the house. He dragged her all the way down to the basement and slammed the door shut, locking it with magic. He told her she wouldn’t be getting out ever again, but that she would still be in charge of the washing and the cooking. The next thing Gee knew, her basement room had been invaded by everything in the kitchen, save for the actual food, which would be sent down whenever her step-family desired a meal. The wash bin was down there as well, but without clothes, so that she wouldn’t get any ideas about stealing her step-sisters’ things.

 

Her dress was replaced with the masculine rags she had been forced into before, but her hair was left alone. Gee supposed that her step-father didn’t care enough to cut it off again. She took pride in that, but it wasn’t enough. She was back in the basement, and more alone than ever because her brother and Lindsey and Ray were free. She was glad that they were free, but she wished that she could have gone with them.

 

The days blurred together as one long stream of working and sleeping and staring at the wall and trying not to cry. She didn’t want to think about how nice it had been to get out of the basement, even though it had only been for one night. She did everything she could to keep her mind off of it, including sleeping more than usual. If she wasn’t working, she tried to sleep, just so that she wouldn’t have to be awake to think about what could have been. She figured that she would be stuck in an eternal loop of work and sleep, with nothing to break the monotony.

 

The monotony was broken while she was doing the laundry for her step-sisters. There was a knock from the window, which Gee ignored because she was afraid to believe that it was real. The knocking continued, though, and so she stopped what she was doing and looked up to see none other than Frank on the other side of the window. He gave a little wave. Gee dropped the shirt she had been washing into the wash bin and ran over, opening the window. She stared up at Frank. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

 

“You left your shoe. I brought it to my father and he went on this long rant about how the owner of the shoe had to be my wife, and so we started going everywhere, looking for the owner of the shoe. No one could fit into it, by the way. You have large feet, which makes sense, considering that you’re rather tall. When my father and I came to this house, your sisters recognised me—obviously—and one of them pulled me aside and told me everything. They said that they had no idea that their dad was actually hurting you, and that they wouldn’t have gone along with it, and that they felt really guilty. I don’t know if I believe them, but that’s not my decision.”

 

“I forgive them.” Gee said. She didn’t want to hate her step-sisters forever.

 

“Oh, well, that’s good then.” Frank blinked at her. “They told me where the window to the basement was, and they told me that, even if you weren’t the owner of the shoe, to lie and say that you were anyway, so that you could get out of here.”

 

“I am the owner of the shoe.” Gee said. Frank nodded. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Gee realised that she was too big to fit through the tiny basement window. She couldn’t get out. Before her face could fall at all, though, Frank was scooting forward and pressing his smaller frame through the window. All of a sudden, he careened forward and fell into the basement, Gee barely having enough time to catch him before he fell to the ground and hit his head. They readjusted themselves, both giggling a little. Gee brushed her hair away from her face. “I guess we just have to wait for your father to come looking for you, then?”

 

“And once he finds us, you’ll put the shoe on and it’ll fit and you can come back to the castle with me.” Frank grinned up at her. Gee nodded. There was one thing bothering her, though. “Frank, you’re a great guy, but I don’t know if I want to marry you right now. I mean, we know each other, but we’ve only been reunited for less than a day.”

 

“It can be a platonic marriage, I guess.” Frank said. He didn’t sound too excited about the ordeal. Gee leaned down and kissed the tip of his nose. “It doesn’t have to be strictly platonic, you know. I just don’t want you to think that I’m rushing our friendship and trying to turn it into something it’s not ready to be.”

 

“Don’t get philosophical on me.” Frank said, but he was smiling at her and she knew that he was only teasing. She led him over to the mattress she called her bed, as it was the only other place besides the floor to sit on. There, while they waited for the king to come find them, they discussed what they wanted to happen. Mikey, or course, would get to come live in the castle with Gee and Frank, since he was Gee’s little brother and she didn’t want to stay separated from him. Lindsey and Ray and their families would be allowed to move in if they wanted to, and if they didn’t, then they would be allowed inside the castle whenever they wanted to visit Gee and Mikey. Allison and Amelia, Gee’s step-sisters, were old enough that they could move out, and Frank was pretty sure that he could convince his father to supply them with either a small house or a nice apartment.

 

“What about your step-father, though?” Frank asked her. “He did the worst to you, so if anyone deserves to be punished, it would be him.”

 

“I think, when we get married—since we have to get married—he should get the honour of walking his daughter down the aisle.” Gee said with a complacent little smile on her face. Frank looked dumbstruck. Gee gave him her best look of innocence. “What? I’ve always thought that the best kind of revenge is a smile. I’ll definitely be smiling when I get to hang out with you every day.”

 

Frank laughed. “You’re incredible, Gee.”

 

The king did eventually find them, and everything was sorted out. In true fairy tale style, the two fell in love a few years after they were forced to marry, and they lived happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment or something to let me know how I did!
> 
> (Also, I'm on tumblr as pickledgerard if you want to follow me)
> 
> -Cal


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